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Hold your "unholy alliance" jokes please. According to a Reuters report, cable provider Comcast and games maker EA are close to a deal that would stream games through Comcast's new X1 box after two years of extensively testing the service.

Titles included in the deal so far are games like Madden, FIFA and Plants vs. Zombies. The move would allow Comcast to dip its toe in the increasingly profitable video game space by allowing its customers access to games on their TVs without any hardware past their cable box. Consoles would be cut out of the loop completely.

It seems like there's no end to the amount of strange new emerging threats to "traditional" video game consumption these days, and this partnership is one that especially seems a bit out of left field. But how much of a potential problem is it for consoles really?

Comcast is a hugely powerful force in media, and with its upcoming merger with Time Warner Cable, it will be in about 30 million homes across America. Theoretically, that's 30 million people who will have access to certain games without owning a $200-$500 video game console.

Still, even if that sounds scary on the surface, there are so many unknowns here it's hard to say how much potential this idea really has. Though everyone is working on the ability to stream games, the system has hardly been perfected yet and those that have tried to make a real go of it (OnLive) have failed. With Sony's PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One arriving with amazing graphical capabilities, it's hard to imagine Comcast's streaming system will be able to reach anywhere close to that level of performance. If anything, this would likely be competing more with Apple TV and Amazon's Fire TV, focusing on more casual, mobile-ish titles.

Then there's the gameplay aspect. I thought this news meant Comcast would have to design some kind of controller themselves (complete with monthly controller rental fee!), but the report says you'll be able to use a tablet you already own as a controller to play the games. How will that possibly work with a game not being played on the tablet itself? It's not like regular tablets have actual buttons or joysticks on them like a Wii U gamepad. Will the games service itself cost extra? Will streamed games cost a flat fee or will they be rented for limited play sessions?

I know that cable is going to pull out all the stops to remain relevant in this age of cord-cutting, but this deal seems like little more than a tiny bonus for cable subscribers rather than an industry-changing development.

This is only a handful of games from a single publisher. Maybe if Comcast wrangled a bunch of huge developers to sign on with a bunch of their biggest games, it would seem more scary. I also have to imagine most people with enough disposable income to have a cable subscription who would be interested in playing these games at all would already own at least some form of a home console.

It's also hard to envision Comcast and EA, who between them have three out of three of the "Worst Company in America" crowns the last three years, will be able to come up with a consumer friendly pricing and service model for this new games distribution system. It's easy to foresee high prices and plenty of technical problems based on what we've seen from the two companies in the past.

Still, I think more competition in the home gaming space is only a good thing. It keeps the existing pillars of the industry on their toes, and forces them to constantly evolve their own offerings to keep pace with emerging competition. In it's current form, this Comcast/EA project seems relatively innocuous, but who's to say it couldn't evolve into something formidable someday?